Envoy to China of the 21st Century

When I was a university student over twenty years ago, there used to be few friends who liked to study Chinese because that communist's country was, like North Korea, one of the most mysterious countries. There seemed to be few chances to do business with China because it was geographically near but mentally far from Japan.
Since Japan and China have become more closely related together than ever before, lately most of Japanese university students want to choose Chinese as their second foreign language class. Some gives up English and chooses Chinese as his or her primal foreign language.
However some of the applicants have to study another language like French, German or Russian for their second foreign language classes because the capacity of Chinese classes is not enough for the applicants in most Japanese colleges.
More than 1200 years ago, Japanese top elites at that time studied Chinese poetry to get the rare ticket for Tang Dynasty China because there was newest knowledge in the greatest empire of Asia. In the 21st century, what do young elites want to find in China?

from TOKYO